Andy White has fought through enough obstacles in his quest to make Team Canada in track and field that he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a delirious wild man trying to beat him with a thick wooden log keep him from his goal.
The force that is pushing him to achieve that goal is so much more powerful, so much more potent. There’s a photograph that drives White on, a picture of a fit and strong young woman dressed in a red and white track suit with the name “Canada” written across the front of the jacket. Andy White looks at that photo of his mother every morning when he wakes up. It sits beside his bed, the first thing he sees each day. He feels the push to keep on fighting for his own dreams, to follow in her footsteps and represent Canada in competition against the world’s best.
Next month the Argyle secondary and University of British Columbia grad will live that dream, putting on his own Team Canada track suit and competing in javelin at the 2015 Summer Universiade — formerly known as the World University Games — scheduled for July 3-14 in Gwangju, South Korea.
The story of how he qualified for the Universiade is an epic tale of outright terror, perseverance and performance under pressure. The story of why he did it is even more powerful.
• • •
White believed this would be his last-ditch effort. The qualifying standard to make Team Canada in men’s javelin for the Universiade was 71.00 metres, a mark he had failed to reach one week before the qualifying deadline. There was a meet in Lethbridge, Alta., May 15-17 with javelin scheduled for the day before the qualification deadline, so the North Vancouver native loaded his javelins, track gear and a foam mattress into the back of his father’s 2002 Ford Explorer and set off across the mountains, sleeping in the back at various points along the way to save money and energy.
The day of the event broke warm and dry, but Prairie storms don’t need much encouragement to ruin a picnic, scuttle a soccer game or even, on rare occasions, wash away someone’s Team Canada dreams.
By the time the javelin event started, a billowy white cloud in the distance had grown to a deep grey menace. The rain was pouring and the wind was howling in Lethbridge.
Needing a throw of 71 m, all White could muster was a 57.
“We couldn’t get off any decent throws,” he said. “After the meet I was feeling bummed out. I’d come all this way and I didn’t get my throw in.”
White commiserated with his buddy Curtis Moss, a New Westminster native who finished 22nd in javelin at the 2012 Olympic Summer Games. White mentioned the possibility that he could drive all night to get to another track meet in Kamloops for one final shot at making the standard. Moss, at first, was doubtful, pointing out that an athlete already tired out from a tough competition who then had to drive more than 800 kilometres to compete the very next day probably would not be able reach peak performance. White agreed.
“My plan from the get-go was go to the Lethbridge meet and throw. If you make it, cool. If not then that’s it.”
The tune changed, however, when White mentioned to Moss that the deadline to qualify for the Universiade was one day away.
“Oh man, you’ve got to go,” said Moss. “You’ve got to do it. . . . How often do things go according to plan?”
White, jolted from his Prairie blues, sprung into action.
“I literally just packed my stuff up,” he said, adding that all of his gear was still soaking wet. “I hung it around the truck to dry and drove straight to Kamloops.”
Nine hour later he was parked on the campus of Thompson Rivers University, tucking himself into bed in the back of his dad’s Explorer and wondering if the next day would present him with more disappointment, or a ticket to his dreams.
• • •
Sleeping in a car is always a little dicey, those bits of sheet-metal and single-pane windows providing little protection from the wild world. White remembers hearing footsteps in one of his half-awake moments and thinking something was amiss.
“Why is someone walking near my truck?” he asked himself. When he parked there the night before there weren’t many signs of human activity anywhere near his spot. It was near 6 a.m. and sleep was still winning the battle.
Then, BOOM!
White’s eyes flew open and he sat up. What he saw was close to the worst-case scenario for someone sleeping in a car in a quiet little parking lot of a distant city.
“This guy is just walking around the truck, punching the windows of the truck,” he said. “I was freaking out.”
Thinking the man wanted to break a window and steal something, White made his presence known, yelling at him to get away. The man yelled back.
“Get out of the truck!”
Andy White is no pushover, his track and field photos showing off the ripped physique that helped him dominate in several sports in high school, including sprinting, football and rugby. But he was not interested in fighting a mad man at dawn in a deserted parking lot.
“He was really violently attacking the car,” he said. “I didn’t want to engage in any contact with him. First of all, if I hurt myself I wouldn’t be able to compete. And I just didn’t want to have to deal with any conflict. I thought I could just talk him down, like a drunk guy.”
He couldn’t.
“Get out of the truck!” the man yelled again and again, punching the windows all the while. “Get out of the truck!”
Then the punches turned to kicks, and White decided it was time that the police got involved.
“I’m starting to freak out at this point,” he said. “This guy — I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m going to get hurt or something.”
The dispatcher told him police were on the way and kept White cool by talking him through the ordeal. What does the man look like? What is he doing now?
He’s mid-40s, kind of big, he told her. He’s kicking the truck very hard. OK, he’s stopped now and he’s walking away. He’s coming back and he’s holding a log that’s bigger than a baseball bat. He’s slamming the log into the side of the truck. He’s hitting it really hard now. He’s smashed the window. He can see me. He’s reaching in. He’s trying to grab me. He’s trying to grab me.
White slid into the back corner of the truck, as far away from the man as he could get.
That’s when the police arrived.
“They got there in probably about four minutes,” said White. “It was pretty quick, but it seemed like a long time.”
Guns drawn, they approached the man and ordered him to stand down. The man stopped grabbing but stayed in the window, staring at White.
“The guy was just breathing, kind of panting — looking in my window, looking at me,” he said. “He just seemed really out of it. He wasn’t quite altogether there. I didn’t know if he was on some drugs or alcohol or whatnot.”
Police moved in, arrested the man and took him away. They later told White that it was a visiting soccer coach in town for a tournament who claimed he was “blackout drunk” during the incident. A spokeswoman from the Kamloops RCMP confirmed that they are recommending mischief charges stemming from the incident.
“Quite the wakeup call,” said White. There would be no more rest that morning as he faced potentially the biggest competition of his life. With the help of some sympathetic employees at the local Home Depot, he patched up the truck’s window with tarp and tape and made his way to Hillside Stadium for the annual Centennial Track and Field Meet. As he prepped for his event, scheduled for 11 a.m., he gave himself a pep talk. “You didn’t come all this way and go through all that not to hit this,” he said. “You’re doing it today.”
His first throw: 71.14 m. Hello Universiade.
“It was just this huge outpouring of relief,” he said. “I’d done it.”
• • •
This week, White’s Team Canada gear will arrive and he’ll get to suit up just like his mother did. In 1972, Linda Rossetti took part in a Pan American Cup cross-country race held in Victoria, finishing 12th.
She was a vice-principal at Seycove secondary when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Before she died in 2010, at age 55, she gave her son a photograph with a note written on the back.
“Mom age 17 competes for Canada,” she wrote.
“It’s kind of cool that she left this with me,” said White, his voice breaking slightly. “I know for her it was always her dream to represent Canada. I think it’s kind of cool I’m going to get the opportunity to do that as well.”
White has big goals in his mind — Olympic qualification for 2016 or 2020 are the highlights — but this qualification for the Universiade will always hold special significance. He’s competed in big events throughout his athletic career but never before has he represented Canada in competition. He will now.
“Her wish for me was to always follow my dreams, so that’s why making Team Canada is quite a special accomplishment for me,” White said. “The biggest thing I’ve taken away from it is you can go through a whole bunch of different setbacks and still achieve a great result. I think there’s a neat lesson for me in that. Never give up, go right to the end.”
As he tells the incredible story of his quest to follow in his mother’s footsteps, White holds the photo in his hands, the picture of his mother so young, so strong, so proud in her Team Canada gear.
